Friday, August 29, 2014

The press covering the rise of
the 3D printer has been universally positive and for all intents and purposes
should as the benefits provided by the technology in a number of fields particularly design, prosthetics and medicine. However, the blanket praise for
the 3D printer and its many positive implication is washing over the truly
terrifying consequences of its advent

Last year we got a glimpse into
the bold new world offered by the 3D printer thanks to law student and
anarchist Cody Wilson’s Defense Distributed making then using the first 3D printed gun named “the liberator”. The implications of the liberator are
complex and varied but the most concerning of which is that not only can the 3D printer make a gun that fires but the means to produce one is widely available.

Needless to say, governments
across the globe were less than pleased with the prospect of 3D printed guns
ending up in the hands of their citizens as the U.S State Department, not
surprisingly, “through its Office of Defense Trade Controls Compliance, forced
Wilson to take down the online blueprints for the "Liberator" and all
the other 3D-printed weapon parts that he has made available online”[1].

However, Wilson, less than
pleased that the liberator blueprints were now offline, realized that the
damage had been done. The blueprints to the liberator had already been
downloaded in the hundreds of thousands and has gone viral and more importantly,
global since. As a result, the Liberator has shown up across the world and in May
27 year old Japanese Yoshitomo Imura made history and became the country’s
first arrest for being in possession of five liberators, two of which being
able to fire live rounds[2].

Whatever is said about the
Liberator no one can deny that it was a ground-breaking and terrifying
innovation in the manufacture of weapons and with all innovations since the
beginning of time, more are sure to follow and thanks to Texas based Solid
Concepts, they did. According to the Guardian the Texas based custom
manufacturer “replicated the parts of a classic Browning 1911 pistol - standard
issue for the US armed forces until 1985 - using direct metal laser sintering
(DMLS), and can now offer 3D printed gun parts to any “qualifying customer”
within five days”[3].

Innovations by Defense
Distributed and Solid Concepts in the manufacture of weapons has shown the
darker side of the 3D printer and all it’s terrifying possibilities but their ambitions
for weapons manufacture using the 3D printer pale in comparison with the US Army
and large weapon manufacturers bid to exploit the 3D printer for their own ends.

Lockheed Martin, major supplier
of the US Army, is looking at where they can make use of the 3D printer to
lower the cost attached in making military grade satellites. According to 3Ders
“Lockheed executives expect additive manufacturing, or 3D printing could help
to reduce cost, cycle time and material waste. 60 percent of its satellites
relies on outside suppliers, Lockheed says its engineers are evaluating which
satellite components could be 3D printed in-house”[4].The company has already made
use of the technology on it other products such as it interplanetary juno
aircraft and is planning to use the 3D printer “to build propulsion tanks”[5].

Along with making their
satellites cheaper to make, the 3D printer may make Lockheed satellites more
efficient as “the light-weighted satellite would allow the government to pack
on more sensors, or launch satellites on smaller, less expensive rockets”[6]. However, The US army is looking
to use the 3D printer for the deadliest weapon of them all, nuclear warheads.
Nuclear warheads are notoriously expensive to make and even more costly to
maintain but with the advent of the 3D printer, warheads, just like Lockheed
Martin’s satellites and tanks, become cheaper and potentially more efficient
instruments of death.

According Motherboard’s Jordan
Pearson “warheads using 3D-printed components could be designed to be more
compact in order to pack in additional payloads, sensors, and safety mechanisms”
which makes an already terrifying weapon just that bit more menacing. However
the terror the doesn’t end there as Pearson points out “Planning for printed
parts in the design process will also allow the army to precisely engineer the
blast radiuses of warheads for maximum effect”[7]

What this means is that not
only has the US military made the nuclear warhead cheaper to make but
potentially a game changer in future wars as they become operationally
effective in military missions abandoning their traditional role as a deterrent
to other states. What this all means in the
wider perspective is while the 3d printer is one of the better innovations of
the last 20 years, it may just be responsible for greater aggression among
states as it weakens one of the main disincentives that prevent war, the
exorbitant cost of prosecuting one.

The ballooning cost of war has
been one of the major factors of why wars since the World War Two have gotten
smaller and less deadly. It’s also why wars aren't as protracted as was before
as long term wars cost money as the US Army, to its detriment, has found out
the hardest way possible in both Iraq and Afghanistan. But the with advent of
the 3D printer, war may become more protracted, cheaper, and deadlier than they've ever been which may produce wry smiles in the pentagon but trepidation
just about everywhere else.

In sum, with the advent of the
3D printer, anything is possible and this fact is probably the most sobering and
terrifying thought of them all.

Tuesday, August 26, 2014

“Cars are not just boxes to take us from A to
B, they are – for the time being – so much more than that. Driverless cars will
rob us of the great rite-of-passage that is learning to drive. Who wants to
live in a society where fathers and their sullen teenage offspring can’t find
some brief moment of connection, grinding a Punto round in circles in an
industrial estate car park?”[1]

In lieu of search giant Google
testing their driverless car prototype, much has been said about the advent of
the driverless car from its benefits to its wide ranging implications for the
automotive industry but what interesting thing about the driverless car is, as
Forbes Tim Worstall pointed out “is not the technology itself: it’s the
industries that that new technology is going to push into obsolescence”[2].

The advent of the driverless
car would not only make a number of industries obsolete but also will serve as
an affront to the key ideal that underpins the purchase and maintenance of
cars, independence which is, and will continue to be the biggest barrier to
widespread adoption.

Independence is at the heart of
why despite statistics on global scale showing that human beings are horrible
drivers that injure, maim and kill each other in the millions every year, It
will be hard for Google to persuade people to at once surrender their
independence then put their faith and lives in the hands of a handful of
sensors and robustly written code.

Despite this glaring roadblock,
Google and growing number of companies looking to get ahead of the driverless
trend are still underestimating the powerful drives of independence and
nostalgia when people buy and drive cars. Ask someone what their first car was
and a sentimental smile crawls across their face as a flood of memories flood
their consciousness. People still like the smell of a new car they bought with
their own money, revving the engine and driving around playing the latest tunes
till heart’s content. With the driverless car, all these experiences disappear
and moving around town will become pretty much like the truly alienating
experience of tube or metro travel only that much worse.

The driverless car may end prove
to be a safer ride from point A to B but will be a better one? You can argue
that the large number of injuries and deaths with humans at the wheel makes the
driverless car a moral imperative but arguments like these are used to support
the use of drones in the field of battle. Human beings maybe horrible drivers
but if driving was about aptitude rather than independence roads across the
world would be eerily empty.

For all the passionate and
powerful arguments made in favour of the driverless car by its proponents, the
day they and google dread is the day when someone dies in one of them. Should
this happen, Google will open themselves up to a litany of expensive lawsuits
that will send its legal costs through the roof. The already low level of trust in the
technology will shrink into non-existence and the powerful interests that would
like driverless cars to disappear might just get their wish.

However, for all the bluster
about the driverless car, the UK public certainly aren’t waiting with baited
breath to be relegated from captains of the open road to alienated passengers
as according to a survey conducted by Ipsos-Mori, “only 18% of the British
public think that it is important for car manufacturers to focus on driverless
technologies. 41% say it is unimportant”[3].

However the most interesting
findings of the survey wasn’t about who was against the driverless car but who
was for it as the biggest constituencies in favour of the driverless cars was
either people who don’t own cars, wish to own one in the three years, or people
“who are not driving enthusiasts” while those who were “were less likely to
embrace it”[4].

The survey also revealed a desire
among motorists for car manufacturers to focus on developing new and existing
technologies that helps make driving safer as 84% of the respondents wanted see
more developments in “forward-collision avoidance systems”, “lane departure
warning systems” and “car to car communications”[5].

Across the pond, US motorists
don’t seem so keen on the advent of the driverless car either as an overwhelming
majority of Americans shudder at the thought of surrendering control of the
wheel as an incredible “9 out of 10 American adults
fear these advances, citing hardware and
software failures, as well as security issues stemming from mischievous malware
and hackers hell bent on causing chaos as primary concerns”[6].

The
real security fear among the American public surrounding the driverless car
shows up strongly in a poll by the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers as “About
75% of respondents said they were concerned that companies would use the
software that controls a self-driving car to collect personal data, and 70%
were worried that data would be shared with the government”[7]

With
the current revelations of the US government collecting wholesale information
on US citizens and the collusion of tech companies, including Google, in
helping them do it, the American public security fears regarding their privacy
is completely understandable. Google’s entire business model is based on
exploiting search data gleaned from their search engine and their services for
profit so Google expanding their business model to their driverless cars is not
exactly beyond reason as The Next Web’s Roberto Baldwin pointed out:

“The
search giant has a history of products that learn about you. As soon as Google
launched Gmail, it began gleaning data about its users. Then came Google
Maps, Android, Google+, Google Now. With each new feature tied to your account,
the Google brain got smarter about your life. Google Now knows when
you’re at work and how long it’ll take to get home based on current traffic. It
knows what you buy based on your search history and Google Express purchases.
It knows which party you’ll attend on Friday thanks to Calendar. All that
knowledge could be driving you around town”[8]

But, in truth, it’s difficult
to see Google, a search engine company, taking the driverless car to the end
zone as we’re more likely to see Google partner up with one of the big car
manufacturers or sell the technology outright. Google have a long history of
producing software then partnering up with manufacturers that can make use of
it as they did with android in partnering up with established smartphone
manufacturers[9].

Another factor why Google won’t
push to get driverless cars on streets across the globe is they clearly don’t
want to deal with the fierce push back they will experience as the advent of
the driverless car will guarantee the death of taxi drivers, cabbies, lorry
drivers and countless others making the current climate for innovation in the
auto industry, to put it mildly, poisonous.

Tesla Motors is running into
roadblocks at every turn in simply trying to sell their cars directly to consumers
thanks to the pull auto dealers have at state level and Uber is unifying a
usually fractious taxicab community fighting tooth and nail to keep their daily
bread so Google entering the automobile market and ushering a driverless
revolution that renders them useless is not exactly going to be met with open
arms.

Taxi cab drivers are even less
receptive to Google’s tentative step into the automotive market given their
large investment into Uber, the taxi industry main nemeses, to the tune of $258
million via its investment arm Google Ventures[10].
Bill Maris, the current managing partner of Google Ventures, has been talking
up the future market value of the app based car rental service and his
confidence in its management means, besides Maris doing the job of all VC’s of
upselling the future value of their investments, Google aren’t about to cut and
run from Uber anytime soon[11].

Ultimately, Uber serves as a
useful proxy for Google’s endgame of creating an on demand driverless taxi and/or
delivery service quite perfectly as Uber is already looking to develop a fleet
of driverless cars which would lower the cost of travel for its growing number
of urbanite users[12].

Uber is also engaging in an
intense political dogfight with regulators and taxi drivers in the US and
beyond but so far the entrenched interests of the taxi cab industry has had the
upper hand. Realising this, Uber have made the smart move of hiring David
Plouffe, President Obama’s campaign manager in 2008, as their senior VP of
policy and strategy as Uber’s CEO Travis Kalanick has learned the hard way that
innovation is political as it gets.

Plouffe’s appointment already
looks to reap dividends as the company is already taking on it political
opponents with zeal as Kalanick took advantage of the delicious irony of a
Calfornia senator who voted against Uber getting arrested for DUI, a fate he
would have avoided entirely if he made use of the company’s service[13].
The company used the Senator’s folly to promote itself as what it really should
be, a solution to the very real problem of drunk driving and ultimately an alternative
to driving altogether.

Uber promoting itself as a
safer alternative is eerily similar to the position held by Google’s x team
arguing the benefits of the driverless car. Sebastian Thrun, Google’s
driverless car project leader, was using the same talking points during a powerful
speech at TED in Brussels citing not the only safety of the driverless car compared
to the human driven models but the time and space wasted in driving and maintaining
vehicles[14].
In an interview with Foreign Affairs, Thrun cited pretty much stuck to the same
position he expressed in his TED speech with only one new talking point: the
death of private car ownership as he noted “You can also envision a futuristic
society in which we share cars much better. Cars could come to you when you
need them; you wouldn’t have to have private car ownership, which means no need
for a garage, no need for a driveway, no need for your workplace to have as
many parking spots”[15].

So be prepared to hear arguments
like this over and over again until your eyes bleed as Thrun, Google and indeed
Uber know full well that the demand of for safety and security, especially when
it comes to modes of transportation, is never cyclical and is the best political
argument for innovation of them all.

In sum, on the face of it, the
advent of driverless isn’t revolutionary given the high level of automation
used in other modes of transportation but it is intensely political and
personal. It’s eventual adoption in the market place will mean a number of established
industries will either have to change their business models or die an slowly
and ugly death, a fate that interests in the auto and Taxi industry will fight
tooth and nail to avoid. However the biggest obstacle isn’t the entrenched
interests of the Taxi or auto insurance industry but the sure to be slow rate
of adoption among potential consumer who are both enamoured with romance tied
to car ownership and concerned about ceding control of their fate on the open
road to sensors and elegantly written software.

After winning the IBF world
title in a tight decision victory against Shawn Porter last Saturday,
Kell Brook now has the boxing world at his feet and has number of mouth-watering
fights but no fight has boxing fans drooling in anticipation than a potential
showdown between Brook and Amir Khan.

The fight has box office smash
written all over it as both are popular figures in British boxing and just
happen to hate each other’s guts. Brook has always wanted to fight Khan
convinced he had the measure of the Bolton native but Amir Khan, while having
respect for his skills in the ring, saw him as a none entity as at the time he
was a two world title belt holder and was being lined up in potential fights
with PPV monsters Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao.

But since then Khan lost his
belts and has been working tirelessly getting his career back on track securing
impressive wins against durable but beatable fighters in Carlos Molinia and
Luiz Collazo. Khan has also been chasing a pay day showdown with Mayweather but
has so far been unsuccessful in his attempts to get in the ring with the sport’s
bona fide superstar as Mayweather is set to fight Marcos Maidana , a man Khan
and indeed Mayweather have already beaten.

There has been talk that Khan
might just get his long held wish to get in the ring with Mayweather next year
but nothing is set in stone. Now Khan has a choice between chasing Mayweather
or taking a fight with Brook that can be made and makes sense for all parties
involved. Should Khan beat against Brook, a fight with Mayweather would be
inevitable as he would establish himself once again as one of the sports major
stars. A win for Brook would add further weight to the Yorkshireman name across
the pond and in the sport. It would also open up a number of enticing fights
including with Mayweather and most likely with the dangerous Keith Thurman, one
of the few fighters from the states prepared to fight across the pond.

However the biggest winner of
fight between Khan and Brook would be fight fans across the board who get to
see two great fighters who don’t like each other much get in the ring to see
who’s better in an era where the best fighting the best has become a foreign
concept thanks to the notoriously nasty politics of the sport.

In sum, Brook and Khan is the
only worth making for both fighters and we only hope that Matchroom promotions
Eddie Hearn continues to earn his growing reputation as a promoters to gets
fights made people want to see in making this great fight happen.

Thursday, August 21, 2014

Say what you will about Cardiff City owner and chairman
Vincent Tan and how he runs his club but one thing you can say about him or
just one more thing you can say about the eccentric billionaire is that he has
a long memory.

Former Cardiff City manager Malkay Mackay and Ian Moody,
Cardiff’s former head of recruitment and now Crystal Palace’s technical
director were to find this out to their detriment as Tan sent a comprehensive
document to the FA detailing their transfers made during their time at The
Cardiff City Stadium and a litany of crude emails and text messages sent
between the two “including one about South Korean international Kim Bo-Kyung
which refers to him as a “fkn chinky””[1].

The Fallout from the release of the document to the FA and
some of the more lurid and offensive messages leaked to the press has had
immediate ramifications for the pair as Mackay is now out of contention for the
vacant Crystal Palace manager position that had his name written all over it and
Moody could soon be out of one as according The Telegraph “Moody is on the
verge of leaving Palace after the revelations, with sources describing his
position as technical director as “untenable””[2].

According to the Daily Mail, the messages between Moody and
Mackay were sourced as a result of a raid on Moody’s home in March “as part of Cardiff’s
£750,000 investigation into eight controversial transfers”[3]. The raid produced a treasure trove of text
messages and emails as investigators from the law firm hired by Cardiff, “seiz(ed)
work computers and phones and taking electronic imagery of evidence”[4].

All this drama has stemmed from Tan’s dissatisfaction with
Mackay’s and Moody’s additions to the playing staff during their time at the
club as he estimated at least a £2om overspend on eight players he thought
worth less than the £50m that was spent on eight players last summer. Just a
cursory review of how Mackay’s signings fared at Cardiff suggest that Tan
indeed had a point as most of his additions looked woefully out of their depth
at the top level particularly £10m forward Andreas Cornelius who hardly made an
appearance under Mackay despite such a large price tag.

Already heavily invested in the club and feeling cheated out
of his hard earned millions, Tan sought to have the deals made by Mackay and
Moody investigated which has yielded the controversial text messages and number
of ‘discoveries’ regarding their transfers. According to the Daily Mail:

“The
law firm (hired by Cardiff) are understood to have discovered a series of
papers relating to certain transfers that were not included in official
transfer documents. Investigators also discovered the authorisation of payments
to agents for deals in which there was no evidence of their involvement. One
£600,000 transfer included an additional £600,000 fee to an agent”[5]

Mackay and Moody were set to link up again at Crystal Palace
as the club were planning to hire the 42 year old Scot to take over as manager
but his, Moody’s, and Palace’s plans have been scuppered by the shocking
revelations that have gripped the headlines as the dark side of the beautiful
game has reared its ugly head.

In sum, the fate of Mackay’s and almost certainly Moody’s
futures in football maybe be unclear at best at the time of writing but this
instance of alleged misconduct again reveals a nastier side of the game we all
rather wouldn’t like to confront.

Wednesday, August 20, 2014

Bullshit has always been rife in the world but this sharing
economy bullshit is unconscionable. Needless to say, the sharing economy has
nothing so with sharing and everything to do with a sluggish economy and a gang
of tech companies exploiting a second market in goods people already have.

Sharing is caring but people doing their best to profit from
a secondary market on shit they already own has fuck all to do with sharing. Sharing
to me and anybody who isn’t retarded is someone being in possession of a good
and because you’re not an asshole,
you allow other human beings to use that good but this not what’s happening. What’s
happening is people who have goods but can’t pay for them rent them to people
who can’t own them.

The sharing economy
is the latest bullshit being hawked by tech companies with silly names that has
nothing to do with people sharing what they have but people trying their best
to make a return on it. In truth, what we’re really witnessing in the sharing
economy is really a new subletting economy where almost anything can be rented
for the right price. There’s really no problem with this on the face of it
except that it has and will piss off primary market operators such as landlords,
hoteliers and taxi cab drivers who are getting their lunch eaten under their
nose.

People make the argument that companies like Airbnb and Uber
offer a service to a generation that are more likely to rent a good than buy it
outright but this argument reveals the pernicious nature of the so called sharing
economy for what it really is as they won’t tell you why people can’t own these
goods in the first place . The sharing economy exists not because there been a
revolution in social relations between people but because a handful of companies
have figured how to get rich off a generation that have become accustomed to
renting goods because they can’t own them.

I’m not against sharing and I’m not even against subletting but
what I am against is companies worth billions trying to tell me that exploiting
a generation with shitty job prospects and lean banks accounts has anything to
do with sharing. In truth, if they were in the business of increasing sharing
among people they would be facilitating a barter economy rather than opening a
new facet of the increasingly exploitative gig economy.

In sum, companies like Airbnb and Uber aren’t full of shit
because they making money off a generation who can’t own but because they’re
using one of the best elements of human nature, our tendency to share, as a
tool to market a growing secondary market in goods people already own.

Upon hearing of the death or
Robin Williams, the only question I had in my mind interspersed with
the shock of the news his passing was the only any real writer worth the
title should ask: why. Why a man who specialized in putting smiles on many a
face and warmth in the coldest heart for over forty years would take his own
life by hanging himself after attempts to slash his wrist.

This central tragic irony
gnawed at me and i'm sure everybody else that a man who could somehow
give you pathos and comedic energy all in one go could succumb to his
own demons. It's hard to imagine that Williams, though troubled, would see his
death as viable option. It's even harder picture such a man taking his own life
when he had spent it inspiring other to laugh and enjoy theirs.

Williams has had bouts with
alcoholism and drug addiction and has over the years been refreshingly
forthcoming about his demons. Reports suggest that Williams had money troubles
owing to alimony owed to his two ex-wives and had been forced take roles to pay
bills. Williams confirmed as much in a 2010 interview with The Guardian
explaining why he took roles in movies that were notable for all the wrong
reasons[1].

Williams had resorted to
selling some of his assets to ease his money problem as according to the
Telegraph:

“For the past two years he had been trying to
sell his ranch in the Napa Valley near San Francisco, saying: “I just can’t
afford it any more”. Despite dropping
the asking price from £21m to £17.8m, there had been no takers. He had even
resorted to selling some of his collection of 50 bicycles to raise cash”[2].

The effort to deal with his
money problems were also taking it’s toll on Williams as “One neighbour who saw
him in the days before his death said he had become “a shell of himself” and
looked “drawn and thin””[3].

Williams also recently went
back into rehab to deal with his recurring addiction to alcohol just last month
with his spokesman said “was to “fine-tune and focus on his continued commitment”
to staying sober”[4].

However, to our and Robin
Williams detriment, we were to find out that his recent attempts to battle his
long term battle against addiction and depression was to be in vain.

All that’s
left now is our many memories of him doing what he did best, entertain. Many of
my fondest cinematic memories are of Williams energy and range from his still
memorable vocal performance as the genie in Aladdin, his funny yet heart-warming
turn as a dad reconnecting with his family through a certain Scottish child-minder
to his Oscar winning performance as a therapist doing all he can to stop a
young but arrogant genius from squandering his talent.

Sunday, August 10, 2014

Golden Boy Promotions founder and owner Oscar De La Hoya has publicly stated his intention to make Saul "Canelo" Alvarez's next fight a real box office smash with four weight champ Miguel Cotto and with Top Rank's Bob Arum looking for Cotto to take on anybody other than a risky dust up with the dangerous Gennady "triple G" Golovkin, the Canelo v Cotto is real viable possibility.

The fight makes sense on so many levels and there are very few, if any, obstacles in the way of the fight being made which in a sport world famous for denying fans the fights they want to see owing to the Game of Thrones like blood feuds between promoters and managers. With the cold war between Golden Boy and Top Rank thawing with the departure of Richard Schaefer, 2015 could reestablish Boxing as the world premier combat sport after years of the sport falling in decline in the face of its own politics as there are plenty of great fights to be made between fighters in both stables.

The fight could take place next may probably in line with the month's Cinco De Mayo celebrations. Both Alvarez and Cotto are Box office draws and have fighting styles that ensure a great fight and more importantly a great purse of all parties involved which in truth determines whether a fight gets made. However one party that won't be to pleased with the fight will be Golovkin who has become a victim of his own success.

People have a lot of opinions about boxing and thanks to how the sports is run they're mostly negative but one thing you can say about the sport that's predicated by what moves the dial and the sad fact is that while Golovkin is great to watch, the Kazakh doesn't. According to Bad Left Hook's Scott Christ, Golovkin's three round demolition of the usually durable former champion Daniel Geale fared poorly in PPV numbers as "the fight did an average of 758,000 viewers on HBO, cutting Golovkin's audience nearly in half from his last HBO appearance in November 2013". Add to that Golovkin's spectacular but ultimately noncompetitive demolition jobs scare the living hell out of promoters who are risk averse by nature which ultimately means Golovkin is going to have work cut out getting in the ring with real competition.

In sum, I'm no believer in astrology or that human fate being wrapped up in the stars and planets above but the somehow the stars are aligned and a Canelo v Cotto card is coming one way or the other.